Hopes Of Averting E.E.C. Break-Down

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30794, 5 July 1965, Page 13

Hopes Of Averting E.E.C. Break-Down

(N ZP A -Reuter—Copyright)

BRUSSELS, July 3.

Hopes are high in Brussels that France will change her mind and avert a Common Market break-down when the Market’s executive produce revised proposals on farm financing, now being discussed.

The executive commission started work on these yesterday and will meet in secret on Monday and Tuesday to get down to details, taking account of the differing views.

The original proposals which France rejected, causing Thursday’s grave crisis, linked a decision on new agricultral financing arrangements with a Federal-type community budget, over which the European Parliament would have considerable control.

The French Minister for Industry, Mr Michael MauriceLokanowski, said today at Mont-de-Marsan, south-west France, that the Common Market could have nothing but disadvantages for France

unless it included a joint agricultural policy. “Each time France makes an effort to promote a policy which is really in the community spirit, the European executive and some of our partners retaliate by trying to revive the idea of supranationality. This goes against any real construction of European union.

“The disagreement at Brussels has shown after three years and a half of attempts to build up a common European agriculture that this was an illusion, because only France was interested in it.” He also said the idea of a Common Market made sense only if It included agricultural produce. Considerable significance is attached to the fact that France has so far not rejected a meeting of the Council of Ministers scheduled for July 26 and 27.

France’s Ambassador to the Common Market. Mr JeanMarc Boegner, said at a meeting of the permanent representatives of the Six in Brussels yesterday that the French delegation had not vet received instructions from Paris to ask for a cancellation of the meeting, and he provisionally agreed to confirm the date of July 26. A spokesman of the French Foreign Ministry in Paris said yesterday that it was “unthinkable” that any French Minister would go to Brussels for Common Market negotiations “under present circumstances.”

But diplomatic observers point out that “present circumstances” might be changed once revised proposals were tabled, thus leaving the door open to the French Government to review its position. Few observers in Brussels think that France wants to break up the Common Market because she stands to lose more than to gain. Risk of Isolation

There would also be a risk that the other five Common Market States might in the long run band together with Britain and the other European Free Trade Association countries, leaving France isolated in Europe. But some indication was given by the commission president, Professor Walter Hallstein, at a press conference here on Thursday when he said that the commission considered proposals made by Luxembourg’s Prime Minister. Mr Pierre Werne, as very interesting and worthy of study. Under these proposals a decision on such controversial problems as a federal-type community budget and increased powers for the European Parliament should be linked to the eventual merger of the European communities (involving a fusion of the foundation treaties of Rome and Paris) due to take place in 1968.

West Germany’s Foreign Minister, Dr. Gerhard Schroeder, today appealed to France through her Bonn envoy to clarify her intentions towards the Common Market.